Common applications within the field of electronic circuits for e.g. use in telecommunication tend to use higher and higher frequencies. Today the frequency range is stretching into the GHz range. At those frequencies the properties of the substrates used for building monolithic integrated circuits become more and more important. Conventionally, semi-insulating substrates based on GaAs have been used for monolithic integrated circuits to be used for processing signals having frequencies within the microwave range, such circuits being called MMIC (=Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits) and thus having good signal properties for gigahertz frequencies.
Recently, a similar substrate material called MICROXS(trademark) has been proposed by the company Westinghouse for silicon based integrated circuits, see the article by M. H. Hanes et al., xe2x80x9cMICROX(trademark) An All-Silicon Technology for Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuitsxe2x80x9d, Electron Device Letters, Vol. 14, No. 5, May 1993, pp. 219 14 221. Silicon wafers of the type Silicon on Insulator, SOI, are used comprising high resistivity substrates having an initial resistivity value of about 10 kohmcm. However, it is difficult to produce silicon having such a high resistivity because of the very low impurity concentration required. Moreover, the very manufacturing process of the integrated circuits and components thereof at the substrate surface may lower this resistivity. Still the proposed material is not as good a semi-insulating material as those materials which can be obtained using GaAs or even InP as base materials, what negatively influences the high frequency characteristics of circuits built from such substrates.
In the paper by Vu Quoc Ho and Takauo Sugano, xe2x80x9cFabrication of Si MOSFET""s Using Neutron-Irradiated Silicon as Semi-Insulating Substratexe2x80x9d, IEEE-TED 24 (4), p. 487(1982), a method is disclosed for obtaining silicon having a very high resistivity by irradiating silicon with neutrons, the produced material having a resistivity that is unstable during processing for producing integrated circuits.
Some semiconductor materials have been found to have semi-insulating properties, where these properties can be explained as derived from precipitates within the materials acting as or creating xe2x80x9cburiedxe2x80x9d barriers having overlapping depletion regions. For semiconductor materials based on GaAs Fe precipitates were found to be nano-particles of As, see the paper by Warren, A. C.; Woodall, J. M.; Freeouf, J. L.; Grischkowsky, D.; and others, xe2x80x9cArsenic precipitates and the semi-insulating properties of GaAs buffer layers grown by low-temperature molecular beam epitaxyxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Sept. 24, 1990, Vol. 57, No. 13, pp. 1331-1333, and for materials based on InP Cuxe2x80x94In precipitates were found, see the paper by Leon, R. P.; Werner, P.; Eder, C.; Weber, E. R., xe2x80x9cStructure and thermal stability of Cuxe2x80x94In precipitates and their role in the semi-insulating behaviour of InP:Cuxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Nov. 23, 1992, Vol. 61, No. 21, pp. 2545-2547.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a substrate material suited for common processing methods in the art of intergated circuits based on silicon, in particular suited for manufacturing components which operate at high and very high frequencies, such as within the gigahertz range.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method of producing a silicon substrate particularly suited for components intended to be operated at high frequencies, but is not restricted to applications using high frequencies and e.g. can be utilized in high voltage devices.
The problem solved by the invention is thus how to provide a silicon substrate for high frequency applications, capable of being produced using standard methods of silicon processing and allowing components to be built in and/at or the surface thereof, also using standard methods of silicon processing, these methods not influencing the basic characteristics of the substrate.
The invention is based on the realization that semi-insulating silicon substrates can be created in a way similar to that used for the III-V-materials, Ga and InP, as described above, using hereto-junction barriers such as Schottky or pn-hereto-junctions to deplete the silicon material from electric charge carriers, in order to form a material having an extremely high resistivity, comparable to that of semi-insulating GaAs.
Thus, silicon substrates are formed to be used for manufacturing integrated circuits, the substrates having at least one semi-insulating silicon layer formed by including particles having metallic properties and having arbitrary shapes into the layer. The particles can be formed of metals, e.g. W and Mo, metal silicides, e.g. CoSixPtSixWSixand MoSix, or other materials that form hereto-junctions, e.g. SiC, GaN and AN, in silicon. The particles should be small, normally having diameters of 1-1000 nm, i.e. be in a submicron range, and should be present in such a density that depletion regions from neighbouring particles overlap each other. The lattice formed by the particles can be substantially two dimensional or three dimensional. A method of embedding matrices of tungsten discs of nm-size in GaAs is disclosed in L.-E. Wernersson, N. Carlsson, B. Gustafsson, A. Litwin, and L. Samuelson: xe2x80x9cLateral current-constriction in vertical devices using openings in buried lattices of metallic discxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Nov. 10, 1997, Vol. 71, No. 19, pp. 2803-2805. A similar method could possibly also be used for Si-material.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,121 a semiconductor device comprising a perforated metal silicide layer is disclosed. Such a perforated electrically conductive layer could in some aspects be considered to be equivalent to a layer of electrically conducting particles. However, a semiconductor device comprising such an interior, very well electrically conducting layer is not suited for high-frequency applications since, for electric operation of high frequency, electrical currents will be induced globally in the perforated conducting layer ruining the performance of the semiconductor device. In a layer of particles which are electrically isolated from each other only induced currents can be obtained in the particles resulting in only a very small inductive loss.
Silicon substrates having an interior, stabile semi-insulating layer will obviously be well suited for manufacturing integrated circuits on their surfaces, where the standard and very elaborate and efficient methods for silicon processing can be applied directly, the integrated circuits being well suited for electrical signals having high frequencies since the semi-insulting layer will isolate the circuits from the bulk of the substrate and thus reduce the parasitic capacitances and dielectric losses in the substrate.
The substrate material is thus generally based on silicon and has at least one semi-insulating layer which is based on silicon and which often is an interior layer and it comprises particles having depletion regions around them. To form the semi-insulating layer the particles are distributed in such a way hat the depletion regions of neighbouring particles overlap each other. In particular the particles can be made or selected so that the depletion regions are generated by hereto-junctions between the silicon and the particles. Alternatively the particles can be made so that the depletion regions are generated by Schottky barriers between the silicon and the particles.
The particles can for example comprise metal atoms, in particular atoms of molybdenum and/or of tungsten, and/or silicide molecules, such as molecules of a silicide of one or more metals chosen among cobalt, molybdenum, tungsten, titanium, platinum, nickel. The particles can also contain a carbide material such as silicon carbide or a nitride material such as aluminum nitride, gallium nitride, titanium nitride.
The substrate material can then be produced from a silicon plate by producing in a surface layer thereof particles having Schottky barers or hereto-junctions. The particles are made so that they are distributed in such a way that the depletion regions obtained from the Schottky barriers or the hereto-junctions of neighbouring particles overlap each other. Altrenatively the surface layer can be processed or prepared so that such particles can be formed in a later stage, e.g. by heating the material. Then a layer based on silicon, in particular of silicon and/or silicon oxide, is applied on top of the surface layer, so that the top applied layer always is a silicon layer. In the case where the particles have already been produced, the applying operation must be executed so that the Schottky barriers or the hereto-junctions of the particles are not substantially changed. In the case where the surface layer has only been prepared to form the particles, the particles can be formed after or preferably in the applying operation since it will in many cases e.g. comprise a heat treatment or annealing step.
The substrate material can be made to comprise a thicker semi-insulating layer by using, in applying the layer based on silicon, a layer made of only silicon. Then this top silicon layer is thinned and in a surface layer of the tinned silicon layer particles having Schotky barriers or hereto-junctions are formed which are distributed as described above. Altrenatively, the surface layer can be processed or prepared, so that such particles can be formed later. Another layer of only silicon is then applied on top of the surface layer, where like above the applying operation is made so that in the case where particles have already been produced the Schotiky barriers of the particles are not sub-stantically changed. In the case where the surface layer has only been prepared to form the particles, the particles are formed in or after this step. These steps are repeated until a desired layer thickness has been obtained.
The top layer of silicon can always be to an appropriate thickness for building integrated circuits and electronic components at and/or in this layer.
In producing the particles in the surface layer or preparing to form the particles, the surface of the silicon plate can be sputtered, evaporated, implanted or sprayed with some material that forms a silicide or semiconducting compounds with silicon. The layer, in particular all of the plate, is then heated to form said silicide or said semiconducting compounds in the surface layer. In the sputtering, evaporating, implanting or spraying operation, a metal material or a compound thereof can be used, in particular a metal material containing of one or more metals chosen among cobalt, molybdenum, tungsten, titanium, platinum, nickel, more particularly cobalt or a compound thereof. The particles in the surface layer can also be embedded in the substrate during crystal growth of a silicon ingot from which the silicon plate is made.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the methods, processes, instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.